


sehnsucht

by gootarts



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Other, Trans Characters, second person present POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 09:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18962830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gootarts/pseuds/gootarts
Summary: [Fanfic of Wanderlust of the Golden Witch]There’s something to be gained from twisting a story to suit your own interpretation. Naturally, for Battler, that interpretation is one where everybody is happy and absolutely no bad things happen, ever.





	sehnsucht

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Wanderlust of the Golden Witch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733667) by [KinuNishimura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KinuNishimura/pseuds/KinuNishimura). 



> This is fic for Wanderlust, so it probably won't make sense if you haven't read it!

“Listen, Battler.” Gremory said, snorting. “I know you don't have the best memory, but keep up. Don't you remember what kind of story this is?”  


“Stop it!” Battler shouted, tears beginning to come to his eyes. He made to grab at Gremory, but she dodged out of the way. “You stop it, you stop it right now!”

Looking down upon the two girls, Gremory smiled, and then let out a whooping cackle- one truly befitting of a demon. “You're naive, Battler Ushiromiya! This is still Rokkenjima!”

“I'll stop you, I'll, u, uwooooohhhh!!” Battler pointed his finger. “I'll stop you, I'll-! Gremoryyyyyyyyyyy!” He roared, and a certain energy flared up that hadn't in quite some time.

“Sit back and enjoy patiently, Battler.” Gremory grinned a toothy grin at him. “And please- hold your applause 'til the end. Enjoy the game of this demon with no power but procuring love and remembering faults!”

“Fine then, bring it on! For Tora and Sayo's sakes both, I'll tear you down from that high horse you're in, you're gonna wish you'd never even met me, u, uwoooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgh!!!!!!” And with that-

  


  


and with that, he pulled out a pen and pencil.

  


Given the extravagance of the witches’ realm, it was, naturally, a quill and parchment moreso than the tools of a modern writer, but the motion still stood. A kind of challenge.

Gremory raised an eyebrow. “Writing down a riff of this?”

“No!!! I’m challenging your story at its core! If you decide not to give it a happy ending before it even begins, I will!!!”

“Without even reading the backstory? I worked hard on that lore, you know. It’s deep lore. Really deep. The deepest lore.”

“Shut up!!!” With this signature scream-cry-point combination, Battler challenged Gremory, one hand pointing at her as the other clutched the pen close as words quickly began to take shape on the paper.

  


* * *

  


hnnnnng

  


it’s at least six in the morning in at least 1990, which means it’s too early for everything. you really don’t wanna get out of bed and face the cold harsh world outside. so you burrow your face into sayo again. because she is definitely here. and warm. how did you spend an entire 18 years of your life not knowing the joys of stupidly warm girl-boy-gender amalgamation-friends snuggling up to you.

also she’s like stupid soft. soft and warm like mashed potato soft. you’d totally kiss her right now if not for the fact it would probably wake her up. hnnnng. why must adulthood be full of such cruel choices?

anyways you SMASH YOUR FACE into her but softly because she is sleeping and you do not want to wake her up. also partially because WOW she is cute when she sleeps. which okay maybe it’s a bit of a lie maybe she’s a bit of an open mouth snorer but it’s fine! you’re a deep sleeper!!!

it takes you like 10 minutes to get back to sleep maybe. maybe a bit longer. you only really wake up because there’s sun and you’re basically a hotter version of dracula when it comes to sunlight so instead of burning away to cinders you just hiss really loudly and bury your face under the covers. you hear a sigh as the covers are peeled back again. damn you, sayo. but only slightly because you love her a lot even if you want to go back to sleep right now.

“aaaaaaa.” you say.

“i made breakfast,” sayo says back.

“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” she ruffles your head.

“you have until maria finishes breakfast. after that i’ll let her into the room.” and there’s the beatrice voice. which means she is absolutely going to go through with it if you do not get out of bed. maria’s 14 now, but for some reason she still really likes doing that kid thing where they very loudly jump on your bed to wake you up. which, okay, maybe you liked doing it a ton when you were five and dad was sleeping in but it was because he was an asshole!

“hnnnnnng.”

she kisses you on the forehead. right on the birthmark. the hnnnng changes to something a bit happier. more of a ‘i love you but i also really love this bed’ hnnnnnng than a ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaa’ hnnnng.

but eventually you get your dumb flesh body out of bed and put on a bra and stuff. finger comb your hair. etcetera. you can do fancy makeup stuff once you’ve woken up and eaten.

sayo’s chilling in the kitchen chowing down on some rice. there’s some miso and other stuff too. the most special girl in the world is also there, but she looks a little sad that she’s not going to get to jump up and down on your bed today to wake you up.

“morning.”

“morning, uuu.” maria says this through a mouthful of food. the ‘uuu’ is kinda less pronounced compared to back when she was nine. less high-pitched, more of a ‘hmmm’ sound at the end of sentences. she had issues at school with other kids making fun of it a couple years back, but that stopped once you found out exactly who was doing it. or well, you figured it out, sayo kinda did. well. you have no idea what the hell sayo did. but apparently it got the other kids to shut the fuck up about her, so. but it still kinda left its mark here and there. poor kid.

“c’mon, maria, how many times have i told you to not talk with your mouth full?” you ruffle her hair a little. she makes a face.

* * *

“So this is a scenario where….they adopted Maria? Hmm.” Beatrice watched the windows of the realm as Tora continued to gobble down her breakfast.  


“You know I wrote a good thirty-k words leading up to those murders, right?” Gremory crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

“ _I want her to be happy._ ”

“Forget it, Gremoryyyyy. Once he gets started, it’s very hard to stop Battler when he’s on a tangent.” Beatrice nodded in apparent agreement with her own statement as she’d leaned on Battler’s shoulder, trying quite hard to make herself appear uninterested. It was half-working.

“Anyways, _as I was saying_ ,”

Gremory shrugged. “Go on. This is a pretty interesting AU.”

* * *

they’re all basically done eating when you arrive, and maria insists on having all her stuff packed up herself since she’s not in junior high anymore, so she ends up packing her bag while you eat breakfast. sayo’s got your meds laid out next to your rice (fem&ms, fuck yeah. except you don’t say that because maria is around). she’s even got them in that cute bowl! it has a tiger on it!!!  


anyways you spend approximately 5 seconds thanking her for the meal before stuffing your face in a very unladylike manner. it’s totally justified though because you wanna see maria off as she heads back to school, and also she’s forgotten to pack one of her notebooks. you hand it over to her. there’s doodles of summoning circles in the inner cover as sayo’s in the bedroom again putting a kanon wig on because neighbors get weird about you and shannon sometimes. it’s like half weird homophobia and half that they get convinced kanon is illegally subletting to her, which. okay. sure.

BUT AT ANY RATE she is now packed up and she has her lunch and everything! you made it last night! it’s very nice! you even made a smiley face in the rice! yeah maybe she’s not in grade school anymore but you’re 24 and still think those cute lil bentos are cute so who is anybody else to judge. and ah, there’s kanon. right on time. hi kanon. kanon doesn’t say hi back because he’s kanon. that’s fine. you love and cherish him anyways.

you’re all in sapporo nowadays, so school’s only like, 5 minutes away, but you are going to WALK THIS IMPORTANT CHILD TO SCHOOL. and then probably get groceries after, you’re running low on curry. you fucking love curry. you’re okay at cooking, sayo is great at it because servant work, but it’s a nice thing to just heat up and BOOM food when you’re both feeling lazy.

maria gets a hug and a ‘love you’ from you. kanon gives her a nod and tells her to have a good day, which in kanonspeak is basically the same thing you did. also a couple of maria’s friends (which makes you super happy because she has friends!!!!) come up and start chatting after kanon starts to walk away because you guess he can give off a kinda scary vibe? you can understand the sentiment, you guess.

he heads back to the apartment, you tap him on the shoulder.

“need curry.” you gesture over to the nearby store, and he nods.

“ah. thanks. can you get toilet paper while you’re there? we’re running low.” he gives a small smile.

curry acquisition is easy, the lady behind the counter is pretty chill and doesn’t question how one woman can eat all that curry. success.

once you get back, sayo’s left lunch on the table, with a note saying she’s in the park, which, fair. it’s one of those things. after getting out of rokkenjima and liquidating some pretty illegal gold and doing some identity fraud, she had enough to live pretty happy. which apparently meant both doing some writing and making sure those really horny 100k novels she wrote with graphic descriptions of dude!you naked and on a leash don’t wash up on shore. mostly writing.

she first shared her script with you a couple months into living together. she’d apparently been writing it in her spare time, and luckily it didn’t involve real people actually dying, which is definitely a leg up on the rokkenjima stuff. even if she introduced it by slamming it on your bedside table and asking for your opinions. and it kinda…..spiraled? spiraled from there. a publisher ended up liking it, and after that, she started writing more and more, with you as her unpaid beta reader. or, well, partially paid? she feeds you. she’s basically your sugar….mommy? daddy? glucose-based parental unit?

you ponder this while you shower and eventually come up with ‘you share a joint bank account so it doesn’t really matter much provided you discuss large financial purchases with each other beforehand.’ woo cohabitation!

anyways you shower and whatnot. get nice and CLEAN because fuck yeah! hygiene!!! you love smelling like flowers! she’s probably in the park near the big ol’ bush of flowers, too. but for now you’ve gotta do the dishes because you’re not a _totally_ useless housewife. and also she cooked breakfast and the lunch she put on the stove so you might as well was and put stuff away so she doesn’t have to later.

the radio gets switched on, and you quickly switch it from the reporters talking in rapid-fire business words about how badly the housing market is doing. turns out the next channel over is talking about kuwait, aaaaand there we go. some music station playing love story wa totsuzen ni. maria’s sensitive to really loud music, but she’s not around so you CRANK THAT PUPPY UP as you clean stuff. it’s pretty easy to kinda run off to your own little universe if you put on music while doing housework. just you, the radio, and……oh wait it’s been a couple hours. kanon’s back from the park.

“ah. tora.” it’s kanon. and he’s making that one expression people make when they’re totally smiling but they really really do not want you to know they’re smiling. he’s got the leaflet with his outline clutched to his chest. “want to read this over later?”

“i’m not busy right now.” finger guns as you crash down next to him on the couch. he’s kinda used to this nonsense at this point so he doesn’t really react much externally as you plop your head down on his shoulder. but he totally melts into soft warm kanon-goo that slowly changes shape a little as you snuggle up more. do you have a good view of the manuscript? fuck no! but is a shitty view of otherwise pretty good handwriting worth it for kanon snuggle times? fuck yeah. sayo loves this shit but you don’t really get too many chances to cuddle up to her as kanon. wigs are apparently a pain in the ass to maintain if you sleep in them, and a lot of the time the kanon persona is tied to outfit and posture, so kanon is mostly just out and about during daytime.

which, speaking of. he’s very soft and when you look at it, is very soft with very nice lips. and is definitely being receptive to the occasional nuzzles on the cheek.

“so, about the two characters in this section,”

he gives a squeak as you start to pull him into prime Kiss Position. in this case, it’s your hands on his shoulders and staring into his eyes. though it’s not exactly kiss position, because you are but a simple bottom, and sayo is most definitely Not. but that works out because kanon is tilting your chin up a little as he comes in close. he smells like kanon, which is a very kanon-y scent. it is what you would get if you smelled a kanon. and you realize he’s waiting for something.

“uh. you can kiss me. it’s cool.” ahaha and then he kinda looks away for a second.

“…….as you wish.” AW FUCK YES KISS TIME. he leans you back a little on the couch-his hand is warm on the back of your neck-as he slowly adjusts himself. he’s on top now as he nibbles at your neck, slowly trailing love bites up until they hit your cheek, then your lips. they’re very soft. you quite like how soft they are as they open a little to kiss a little deeper, the both of you starting to gasp for breath—

* * *

The scene was interrupted with a loud clap from a single duchess.

“So, just an eff-why-eye, I wrote my game board with the knowledge that I’d rate it M, max. ‘Cause, well, if you write something over a novel’s length, everybody clicking on that E rated fic is going to think there’s boning every chapter.” Gremory, with knowledge of all Archive of Our Own trends both past and future, provided sagely.

“I-I’m not going to….! I’m not going to write that! Why do you think I’m going to write that!?!”

“Hoh, as if you haven’t read this type of scenario befoooore? Where the happy housewife-”

“Tora’s not a housewife!” Battler interrupted his beloved wife.

“Where the happy _wife_ receives her husband early in the daaaay? Before the kids come home? C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, I know you read a visual novel with that scenarioooooo. We read it together, didn’t we?” With a wicked grin, Beatrice prodded his cheek, trying to get him to remember the name—what was it, again? Please Bang My Wife? Funbag Fantasy? Something like that? All he knew was that he was constantly bombarded with full-frontal ads for naked anime girls when he tried to buy Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni.

“Beato!!!”

Beato just gave him a wider grin.

“A-anyways, now that we’ve established that I am very much not actually going to write that sort of thing with Tora, who is basically my sister, can we continue!”

“Go ahead, boss,” Gremory said. Then, whispered to Beato, “Y’know, he’s a bit……you know, but I’m starting to see the appeal of this sorta guy.”

“ _I’m going to continue_ ,” Battler said, leaving Gremory and Beatrice to continue their conversation.

* * *

did you know that sayo is also very soft? because sayo is very soft. she insists you are softer, but that is a bald-faced lie, because she is the very softest person on this planet. you have done exactly one (1) scientific study on it, but it was rejected from peer review because ‘ _you only asked one person for opinions, which is not a valid sample size_ ’. what weenies.  


along with softness, she is also really good at cuddling. she doesn’t exactly have too many clothes on, but neither do you so you’re both under this nice blanket. you’ve got her manuscript in your hands, and her head on your shoulder. she’s nuzzling your neck as you read, it’s super nice. both the nuzzling and the manuscript, you mean. you’ve got a bright red pen, one of those fancy ones, and are slowly going through what she’s written for grammar mistakes. and just general proofreading. mysteries need a lot of work, far more than you initially expected when you were reading christie when you were twelve. there’s planning, and then there’s beta reading to make sure the mystery is just tricky enough. a good mystery doesn’t rely on weird tricks like the reader knowing that certain models of fireplaces also have connecting mailbox things built into it, nor does it have four page long footnotes in german (seriously van dine, what the fuck).

this one’s only half-done, so you’re mostly just checking for grammar. you’ve got A Theory about the story sayo’s writing, but when you give her your theory she only lets out a long, whooping cackle. which either means you’re right on the money or it’s a really stupid theory, and you’re not quite sure yet.

(look, the culprit sniping from a helicopter was _foolproof_. sayo just won’t admit it!)

but she seems to enjoy your commentary. whenever she hits writer’s block, she inevitably ends up chucking a _really weird_ golden age story at you and seeing how you react to it, dumb theories and all. she listens to you as you read it, snickering at any funny comments (or playing off of them; it all depends on the mood, really). and, eventually, she ends up figuring out some way to get around whatever scene was giving her trouble. and then, it gets submitted to the publisher. and then published.

she’s got two books published now. both of them say _dedicated to tora and maria, two of the most wonderful women in my life_ right before the title page. whenever you read the page over, there’s always this urge to pull the book tight to your chest and bury your face in it, because dammit sayo thousands of people will read this! stop being so sweet!!!

but right now you can’t find anything too noteworthy-right now, it’s still in the early stages. no corpses, just background on the characters. so, once you finish, you pull sayo into a hug again. it’s getting close to high school getting out, anyways, as evidenced by both the time and maria knocking on the door to be let in.

which uh. neither of you has a shirt on so whoops time to go rectify that. you chuck on a blouse, sayo just puts her kanon shirt back on. no time to put on a bra because bras are hellish nightmare clothing in every sense of the word but it’s fine you’ve covered basic public decency and will just throw one on later.

maria gets two hugs once she comes in because she deserves them! and immediately after she whips out homework. it’s math, a subject that neither of you are particularly good at. you’ve been cracking open a couple books about it in your spare time, but it does not make geometry any easier.

sayo is surprisingly good at it. not perfect, but she seems to get a couple of the key concepts down and mostly just makes small math errors; accidentally putting a sine instead of cosine, etcetera. she’s, surprisingly, better than you at it, which is weird but also, being better at you at geometry is not a very high bar.

once maria starts on her english homework you and her are basically completely useless because maria is at, what, something like ‘native speaker’ levels for basically all the english language tests? about half the books on the bookshelf are kinzo’s smelly old first edition occult novels all in english, and she has read _all of them_. it’s kinda terrifying.

you help sayo with dinner as maria works. it’s curry! fuck yeah! you’re mostly on stirring duty, to make sure it doesn’t burn in the pot. it’s good stuff, especially the way it smells when it’s finished and poured onto three servings of rice.

there’s a bit more idle chitchat at dinner. grades, mostly. maria’s chatting about friends she made in the religion club (the school said no to an after-school occult club, so she renamed it. regardless of where they are, really weird occult stuff is like candy to teenaged girls, and the administration hasn’t caught on yet). she’d brought one of the solomon keys over to today’s meeting, and was translating to everybody, apparently, and they started talking about what demons each person would summon. you, apparently, would be the duchess gremory.

sayo gives an embarrassed look when vassago gets brought up as the demon representing one of maria’s friends. oh, yeah, she told you that he doesn’t have pants because he was originally a fancy man back in ’85 or so when her and maria were designing a couple demons, but after maria mentioned angels don’t have genders, she immediately jumped on the chance to de-pants him. god you love her.

it’s mostly just talking about the occult-club-disguised-as-religion-club after that. you don’t know anything about it, so it’s mostly just sayo and maria chatting about stuff. occasionally you ask a question you have to maria so that she can answer it and feel smart. afterwards, there’s mostly just chilling as maria watches old _kamen rider_ reruns and sayo works on her manuscript for an hour or so. you tend to mostly plop down next to maria to watch with her (this episode has a bunch dudes trying to turn people into books for whatever reason, and then with the next episode having people turn into…..cat people? tokusatsu is _weird_ ). but the theme is fun. lots of yelling _SET UP_ over and over until the programming block ends and the more adult block starts.

* * *

you’re busy with the dishes when maria walks over to you to give you a hug goodnight.

“‘night!” you give this very important teenager a hug back. she gives a small _uuu_ when you do.

“need me to wish sakutaro and everybody else goodnight, too?” you ask as she picks up sakutaro and sinks into the bed that is roughly 95% stuffed animals by volume.

“it’s fine, uuu.”

ah. getting older. right. old habits die hard, though; even if she doesn’t want you or sayo to kiss sakutaro goodnight anymore, she still snuggles up to the roughly 30 or so stuffed animals in her bed. it’s no big deal (according to sayo, even jessica still keeps her favorite stuffed animal in her bed, by here pillow).

“good night, tora,” she whispers back to you as you shut the door.

once maria goes to sleep, it’s always wind-down time, since neither of you want to wake her up. for you, that’s usually reading in your bed. normally you read mysteries, but you’ve found this really cool wuxia novel series lately that’s kinda been consuming your every waking thought, so ellery queen gets shelved for now. you’re not 100% sure what sayo does.

normally you’ve put your book down to sleep by 10 pm or so, but you’re pretty thirsty tonight. so you go into the kitchen to get some water. and there’s somebody sitting on the table, poring over something. it’s sayo. you thought she normally spent this time reading, but there’s something…..tired about her posture.

“mmm? sayo?” she’s quiet, and there’s that intense look on her face that you don’t see super often.

“oh. tora.” she’s not trying to hide the paper she’s writing on, which is right next to maria’s, and has the exact same diagrams as maria’s, and………

“are you doing maria’s homework for her?” that’s….weird. isn’t she getting good grades? she’s not a straight-a student but then again literally nobody in this house who is an adult is straight so it’s not a big deal. she gets mostly b’s, a couple a’s, one or two c’s.

“ah, uh, no.” she freezes as you walk over—the problems are copied over on scratch paper, with a pen. _sayo yasuda_ is written in the upper left. maria’s math homework, graded, is on her right, and it looks almost like….she’s going through her problems with pen?

“are you….” she has maria’s textbook out, too. with the practice problems. “trying to solve them on your own?”

you get an awkward nod from sayo.

“oh.” pause. “do you need help? i’m not great at this, but-”

a sigh. “i think i’m starting to get it.” her eyes flit from the book to you, and then back to the book. “i never learned past middle school, and i’m in largely charge of the finances, so…..”

  


ah

  


right

  


genji pulled her out of school early on for servant stuff, because sometimes you just need to fucking…..groom this kid to become obedient and also close to kinzo? even over half a decade after finding out about it, it still makes your blood boil. sayo……sayo has more complicated feelings over it. it can be weird, figuring out your adoptive dad was a shit all of a sudden (not for you, because you knew rudolf was a bastard before you really knew what a bastard was).

you pull a chair up next to her. put a hand on her shoulder.

“kyrie has a couple finance books. i could ask her for them next time i’m over there.” dad is still an ass, but you are very determined to visit ange, so his ass-ness gets ignored for that. mostly. also partially because maria still likes hanging out with ange. they don’t really talk about much, they mostly watch anime, but it’s still quality time. you like to make dumb mom comments while they groan at your bad puns. sayo smiles a little at that.

and then she kisses you gently. on the lips.

“thanks.”

the two of you stay like that for a while, until sayo slowly becomes sleepier and sleepier, until she’s leaning on you to walk into bed. it is….not too easy. you have very noodle-y arms. and a noodle-y upper body. in fact, it’s a wonder that you can’t collapsed yet from sayo putting her weight on you. she flops onto the bed like…..a very floppy thing as you tuck her in. the clothes are fine, they’re not super fancy and the wrinkles can disappear after a wash. you hop back to the kitchen to put the stuff she had out away and take off your makeup before snuggling up next to her.

you kinda worm your way into her arms, slamming your head into her chest. but like, in a gentle way. it doesn’t have titties but it’s still very soft and you love it very much, especially when you mash your face into it. you can hear her breathe, you can hear her heart beat. it’s a really zen-like feeling. just you, her and the universe. and maria snoring in the next room. but mostly just you and her. content. happy. as you drift off to sleep, you feel it’s a kind of feeling that even if the world throws whatever the fuck it can at you and this happy pseudo-family, you’ll be able to shrug it off.

* * *

“So, I have a question,” Gremory asked as the curtain fell on the tale of the two lovers. “What were you planning to you if you did a logic error again?”  


The look on Battler’s face said it all. “…..I’d hope that Beato would save me again?”

Beatrice didn’t stop laughing for an _hour_ after that.


End file.
